


Safe Word

by Kantayra



Series: The Masters and Doctors in the Matrix [6]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Countdown, F/M, Locked In, Memory Loss, Mind Games, Minor Original Character(s), Mystery, Pegging, The Master Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:55:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23454388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kantayra/pseuds/Kantayra
Summary: T-minus 60 minutes...That’s all the Doctor gets to figure out who she is, why she’s lost her memory, where this random gaggle of humans came from, and how to escape her TARDIS. And, most important of all: who’s been pulling the strings all along?Luckily, with the Master involved, that’s more than enough time.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Series: The Masters and Doctors in the Matrix [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1592659
Comments: 12
Kudos: 84





	Safe Word

**Author's Note:**

> Contains mild and vague spoilers for Episode 12x10 'The Timeless Children'.

“On your mark…get set…go!”

“Okay, first off: Who am I?

“Oh, right, easy. The Doctor. I’m the Doctor.

“Second: Why am I asking myself who I am? That’s the sort of question you only ask when something traumatic’s happened. Did something traumatic happen? Well, I suppose I do seem to be lying on my back on the floor of the TARDIS. Not exactly comfy. Something probably knocked me out, then. Oh…did I hit my head? Ouch? No, no ouch. Didn’t hit my head. Might’ve still passed out, though. Definitely don’t remember how I got on the floor of the console room. Or what I was doing immediately prior. Memory gap, that’s not good. No head bump, though. What else could cause a memory gap?

“Also, while I’m at it, I seem to be surrounded by one, two, three…four unknown people. Still passed out. Humans? Wait, where’s the sonic? I’ve always got the sonic on me. No sonic. Someone took the sonic. Or I dropped it when I fell. Here, sonic, sonic, sonic…

“Oh, hello. You awake already?”

“Who on Earth are you?”

“Hi, I’m the Doctor. I’m here to help.”

“Help? Help with what? Wait… What is this place? Where am I?”

“All right, I need you to not panic. You’re on my ship. She’s called the TARDIS. You’re safe for now, I promise. No, wait! Why are you panicking? I told you to not panic!”

“Will you knock it off with all that racket? Ow, my head…”

“Hello, Second Unknown. I’m the Doctor. I’m here to help. Please, try not to panic like ‘Fraidy over there.”

“Who are you calling ‘afraid’?!”

“Wait… Where am I? Who are you people?”

“Ouch, my head. Wait, where am I?”

“Who are you?”

“Who am _I_? Who are _you_?”

“Where am I?”

“Will everybody just,” the Doctor cut in, “ _be quiet_!”

The three arguing unknowns came to an abrupt halt.

“All right,” the Doctor said with a brittle smile. “’Fraidy, Second Unknown, and…Lab-Coat. As I’ve been trying to say: please, don’t panic. I can’t quite remember why exactly you’re in my ship, but if we all calm down, I’m sure we can figure it out. And, by ‘we’, I mean ‘you’ for the ‘calm down’ part and ‘me’ for the ‘figure it out’ part.”

“Stop calling me ‘Fraidy!” ‘Fraidy complained. He was middle-aged (assuming he was a human – still no sonic to verify that) and wearing a business suit.

“Second Unknown?” Second Unknown repeated in outraged disbelief. “Is that supposed to be me?” She was young, dressed in some hippie or hippie-revival sack dress and had a very noticeable tongue-stud.

“Actually,” Lab-Coat said, “I’m okay with being Lab-Coat. _Rainbow-Suspenders_.”

“Ooh, sassy,” the Doctor grinned back at her. “I like that.”

“My _name_ ,” Second Unknown insisted, “is Emily. Emily Reeves.” She was a bit feisty, too. Not bad.

“Mark Tsilis,” ‘Fraidy offered his hand to her, seemingly out of force of habit.

Emily took it but looked a bit put-off, clashing customs.

“Nadia Saidi,” Lab-Coat said.

More hand-shaking ensued.

“And you are?” Nadia raised an eyebrow in the Doctor’s direction.

“I’m the Doctor,” the Doctor explained, “as I’ve been trying to say. Repeatedly.”

“But your name?” Mark asked suspiciously.

“The Doctor.”

“What kind of name is ‘the Doctor’?” Emily demanded.

“Presumably the Doctor’s name…” Nadia looked suspicious as well.

“Exactly!” the Doctor agreed brightly, ignoring their suspicions entirely. “Now, where and when did you all come from?”

She bounded over to the central console and pulled up the recent ship’s logs. Apparently, they were in 2023 London. Previously, they’d been…nowhere. The Doctor frowned; there was literally nothing in the TARDIS logs before that. Not even the Black Hole Shipyards back on Gallifrey where the TARDIS had been grown, which had _always_ been the first entry in the log whenever the Doctor had scrolled to the top, without fail, for millennia.

She paused and closed her eyes for one moment to check the TARDIS’ memory, but the TARDIS seemed entirely unperturbed by this chain of events, as if she both understood and was unconcerned by the apparent anomaly. The Doctor entertained the notion, for a brief second, that the TARDIS somehow _wasn’t_ the TARDIS, but their minds were as interconnected as always. No way of faking a telepathic connection like _that_.

In the meantime, the Now-Sorta-Knowns persisted, albeit thinking at a much slower pace:

“What do you mean ‘where and when’?” Nadia asked astutely.

“What about him?” Emily pointed to the fourth unknown, who was still lying on the floor with his eyes closed.

The Doctor had sensed the change in his breathing some time back, but she was curious to test how long he’d pretend he was still unconscious. At being suddenly the centre of attention, he groaned softly, quite convincingly really, and stirred. Emily ran over to help him sit up.

“Are you all right?” Emily asked.

“Where are we?” asked Sneaky Unknown. Not ‘where am I’ but ‘where are we’. Quick to accept their group predicament, then, undoubtedly due to his eavesdropping. If he’d been clever, though, he wouldn’t have given himself away with that little tell. But then he looked directly at the Doctor, as if he somehow _knew_ that she knew that he’d been faking.

For unknown reasons, the Doctor felt a little shiver run up her spine. Oh, this one was very interesting, indeed.

“TARDIS. London. 2023. The Doctor. You?” the Doctor shot out in quick succession, just to see if he’d play dumb.

“Omar Esteth,” he smiled at her with a bit too much tooth. “Charmed.”

“Wait, _London_?” Mark sputtered. “No way is this London!”

“Where do you think it is, then?” Nadia asked.

“Singapore,” Mark insisted. “I’m in Singapore for the big sales pitch. And no way did I get pissed enough last night that I flew halfway around the world and don’t remember!”

“W-What do you mean by ‘2023’?” Emily asked, looking visibly shaken. “Is that the address, or…?”

“That’s the year,” Omar answered, correctly. “Surely, you know what year it is?”

Emily’s face went white. “What is this, a prank? You all are having me on, right?”

Nadia and Mark looked at her, alarmed, and slowly shook their heads.

“It’s the 7th of June, 2023,” Nadia said calmly, holding out one hand to steady Emily. “Why? Have you lost some time?”

Emily laughed more than a bit hysterically. “Lost some time…” she repeated. “No, _you’re_ all the ones who’ve lost some time. It’s 2035.”

“2035?” Mark repeated in disbelief. “No, whatsername is right. It’s 2023.”

The Doctor rechecked the TARDIS sensors, just to be certain. “2023,” she repeated. “But don’t worry.” She turned back to Emily. “I can get you back to 2035. And you,” she addressed Mark, “back to Singapore. I just need to figure out how you all ended up here in the first place.”

This gave her some clues, though. They’d been pulled out of both time and space, and they were inside her TARDIS. The most obvious explanation was that she’d moved them here, and then forgotten about it. The next most likely was some second party with technological space-time capabilities similar to a TARDIS had brought them to her TARDIS, for some unknown reason.

“What about you?” she asked Omar, who had been very quiet through all this. “When and where did you come from?”

“Here and now,” he answered, meeting her gaze calmly. No signs of deception.

“And you?” the Doctor asked Nadia.

“Oh, me too. London, 2023.”

The Doctor frowned. “You two know each other?” she pointed between Nadia and Omar.

“No.”

“Never seen her before in my life.”

“So, I’ve got one out of time, one out of place, and two unconnecteds who haven’t gone anywhere. Where’s the pattern in that?” She frowned, trying to make sense of any of this.

Then a computerised voice sounded from somewhere overhead: “ _Fifty minutes remaining_.”

Everyone froze.

“Fifty minutes?” Mark sounded very scared again. “Fifty minutes until what?”

“That sounded like a countdown…” Nadia was starting to sound alarmed as well.

“What’s it counting down _to_?” Emily asked.

Omar raised an eyebrow in the Doctor’s direction, looking to her for answers, almost challenging.

“That,” the Doctor didn’t answer, “is an excellent question.” She ran another scan, trying to figure out where that countdown was coming from. It didn’t seem to be the TARDIS herself, which wasn’t a surprise, since the Doctor’d never heard the TARDIS give an alarm that sounded like that in all her lives.

“Well?” Mark asked anxiously.

“No clue,” the Doctor admitted, and turned back to look at them all. “Whatever it is, the TARDIS sensors can’t – or won’t - detect it.”

That last option was a bit perplexing, but the TARDIS had that edge to her mind like she knew something the Doctor didn’t but was keeping mum, for whatever reason. It was the sort of sense the Doctor got whenever the TARDIS dropped her off somewhere she _needed_ to go. Therefore, it stood to reason that this was a similar sort of situation: she was needed here, for reasons that only the TARDIS could intuit.

“Whatever’s going on, the key must lie somewhere in the five of us. Now, I know who _I_ am, if not exactly how I got here, so let’s start with you lot. Nadia? Lab coat’s always a good sign that someone’s been mucking about with alien tech that’s better left alone.”

“Wait, wait,” Mark demanded. “ _I_ don’t know who you are. And if this… _thing_ is yours, then it’s pretty obvious that you’re the one behind this! What are you, some madwoman? Kidnapping people and raving about aliens and whatnot!”

All four of the unknowns turned on her, in unison.

The Doctor let out an exasperated sigh. “Perfectly plausible,” she conceded. “And, technically, not the worst description of myself that I’ve ever heard. However, doesn’t explain my memory loss, or yours really, and certainly not that countdown.”

“Screw this,” Emily said. “I’m getting out of here now.”

“Best idea I’ve heard all day,” Mark agreed. He looked around for the door out of the console room. “Is that the way out?” He pointed to the one nearest him.

“Actually,” the Doctor said, “that’s the—”

Mark had run over and opened the door in the meantime.

“—Rainforest,” the Doctor finished sheepishly.

Mark backed away from the door slowly, nearly tripping over his feet in the process. “Where _are_ we?” he demanded. “You said this was London!”

A greater bird-of-paradise flew out into the console room, landed on one of the pylons above Omar, and took a shit. Omar, demonstrating remarkable reflexes, ducked out of the way just in the nick of time.

“Oh, now look what you've done…” The Doctor sighed, slamming the door to the rainforest shut before anything larger, carnivorous, or more obviously alien emerged. “Do you know how long it’s going to take me to get him down from up there?” She looked up at where the bird now flitted back and forth between the pylons nearly thirty feet overhead.

“ _You_!” The Doctor suddenly found Mark’s angry finger inches from her face as he tried to loom over her in an intimidating manner. “Let us out of here _now_!”

The Doctor fought the urge to roll her eyes. She had to remind herself at times like these that humans took a good long while to grow accustomed to the TARDIS and her foibles. On the other hand, she didn’t appreciate being ordered about. She brushed his finger aside and said calmly, “The way out’s to your right. But if you go, no promises that’ll fix the countdown, or give us any answers how we got here.”

“I don’t care!” Mark snarled, and went for the door.

Emily, who’d been growing more and more panicky ever since she’d learned of her temporal displacement, was right on his heels. Nadia and Omar followed more sedately, warier maybe, or curiouser.

Mark pulled open the front doors.

The Doctor blinked, frowned, and dashed back over to the console. “Wait, that can’t be right,” she insisted, and rechecked the scanners. Sure enough, they should’ve been in the middle of a nice little square.

“What kind of sick joke _is_ this?” Emily was hyperventilating now. “Oh god, you’re a psycho, aren’t you? You’re going to kill us all!”

The Doctor frowned up at the open TARDIS doors again. In front of them, was a flat, solid stone cliff-face. “No way out…” she breathed in disbelief.

“No, no, no, no, no!” Mark scrambled at the stone, then pounded his fists on it once, before clutching his scraped knuckles in pain. “Why are you _doing_ this?” he turned angrily back on the Doctor. “Let us _go_!”

“Look.” The Doctor held her hands up placatingly. “I promise you that I am not the one doing this. I’m as trapped as you are.”

“Please,” Emily was crying now, “please, please, just let us go! I’ve never done anything to you!”

“Oh, of course not. I really, really _promise_ that I don’t know what’s going on. But—”

“But?” Nadia’s eyes had narrowed on the Doctor.

“This is a ship, after all,” the Doctor said. “If you all want to go, I can just move her.” That last was a bit sketchy since, as far as the TARDIS was concerned, the doors opened to a nice lawn. The Doctor wouldn’t be surprised to learn that any other location would have the same problem. Either something was wrong with the TARDIS sensors, or something external to the TARDIS was blocking the doors. However, dematerialising and rematerialising was the obvious first thing to try.

Mark and Emily didn’t looked reassured; they looked full-on panicked still, in fact. Nadia had a calculating look in her eyes, like she was trying to work her way out of this situation. Omar, quietly, closed the TARDIS doors and looked at the Doctor expectantly.

The Doctor set coordinates to her old refuelling spot in Cardiff – no way the TARDIS could mistake _those_ coordinates – and dematerialised.

Everyone jostled in shock when they landed. The greater bird-of-paradise, still above, squawked in complaint.

Omar threw the doors opened again…

As expected, the solid wall of stone had followed them.

“Well,” the Doctor said sheepishly, “it was worth a try.”

The mechanised voice from above, as if on cue, announced. “ _Forty minutes remaining_.”

“The other doors!” Mark insisted. “It must be one of the other doors!” He ran to the door to the loo, and flung that open.

Emily ran around the other way and found the library equally unhelpful.

The TARDIS, as if trying to be of help despite being otherwise completely unhelpful, at least contracted her interior so that all the doors opened onto single rooms, and not the endless corridors some of the doors usually led to.

“We’re trapped,” Nadia concluded, when the last of the doors had been tried.

“No, there must be a way out!” Mark insisted. “We have to get out of here before that bomb goes off!”

“ _Bomb_!” Emily squeaked.

“What else has a countdown like that?” Mark said.

“Would you not?” Nadia glared at Mark. She had an arm around Emily’s shoulders, and was trying to calm her shaking. “This is bad enough without you jumping to conclusions all over the place.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said with relief, “thank you.”

“If there _is_ a way out,” Nadia concluded, alas, not unsoundly, “which there must be, then _she_ must know about it. After all, it’s her ship.” She fixed her eyes pointedly on the Doctor.

They all did, really.

“Normally,” the Doctor agreed, “you would be absolutely right. However, I swear, the front doors usually aren’t blocked like that. Someone’s trapped us in here, and until we figure out why, we’re not getting out.”

“Oh, _someone_ ’s trapped us, have they?” The whites of Mark’s eyes were showing now. Clear sign of fear. Not good. “You, little missy, are going to let us out _now_ or else…”

“Or else, what?” Nadia asked, suddenly alarmed at Mark too.

Mark loomed up over the Doctor threateningly and reached to grab her arm.

The Doctor dodged to the side and said, just as threateningly, “Don’t call me ‘little missy’.”

Out of the corner of the Doctor’s eye, Omar – incongruously – let out a snort of laughter and tried to cover it up as a cough into his fist. Oh, oh, _oh_ , what had _that_ been?

“Don’t you tell me what to do!” Mark shouted, having apparently snapped. He suddenly lunged for the oversized wrench the Doctor used to calibrate the stabilisers and swung it _hard_.

Time slowed to a crawl.

That was a thing that humans said, of course, but to a Time Lord it was literally true. The Doctor instinctively pushed herself into a quicker time-stream than the rest of them, giving her all the time in the world to watch the arc of Mark’s swing, hear Nadia shouting “No!” in slow motion, wince at the pitch of Emily’s scream, see Omar blink once, twice, thrice…

She stepped back, neatly out of the way.

And, at the same time, a series of six nodes, hidden at the top of the TARDIS pylons, each fired a high-energy beam.

The Doctor's eyes widened, and she tried to lunge back toward Mark to push him out of harm’s way, but she was off-balance moving in the wrong direction, and it was too late.

Time rushed back into normal speed as Mark was vaporised.

“Oh no…” The Doctor gasped. “No, no, no…”

“Oh my god, oh my god, you _killed him_!” Emily wailed.

Nadia looked at the Doctor with widened, horrified eyes.

“No, I swear!” the Doctor begged. “That wasn’t me. I have no idea how those things”—she gestured to the weapons overhead—“worked. It’s not possible! Weapons _never_ work in this ship.”

Ominously, the voice from above announced: “ _Thirty minutes remaining_.” And then, almost as if taunting them: “ _Half your time has elapsed_.”

***

“Shh, shh, shh,” Nadia hushed. “There, there, it’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

Emily was rocking and sobbing.

It really was a bit much. But then, the Doctor was forced to concede, most humans weren’t used to waking up in strange alien ships, having their memories erased, and then seeing people vaporised right in front of their eyes.

“You,” she informed Omar, who was sitting on the steps several feet away from Nadia and Emily, watching them, “are taking this remarkably well.”

Omar looked up at her, as inscrutable as he’d been since the beginning. “She’s right,” he said calmly, gesturing to Nadia. “It stands to reason that, if this is your ship, you’re the key out of here. Attacking you was…counterproductive.”

Emily whimpered at that, reminded anew of the deadly consequences of being ‘counterproductive’.

Nadia met the Doctor's eyes, trying to look more confident than she obviously felt. Brave woman. “All right,” she said, breathing more deeply than usual, but seemingly trying to remain composed. “How do _you_ think we should get out of here?”

Well, _finally_ some sense.

“Right,” the Doctor said. “Here’s what I think happened. Someone’s brought us all here. Still not sure who. Obviously, someone with fairly advanced tech, enough to teleport all of you into the TARDIS, and also to mess with all our memories. Whoever they are, they need something from us. And Mark attacking me… That went against whatever they needed. He became a danger to their plan at that point, superfluous, and they preferred him dead to interfering with the rest of us.”

Emily’s sobs were tapering off. Nadia looked somewhat mollified. Omar was looking to the Doctor for what to do next. It seemed that, at last, they might be considering that she wasn’t the villain in all this. Likely out of desperation, but if desperation was what it took, the Doctor would take it.

“So,” Emily said hopefully, “if we find out what they need and do it, they might…let us go?”

Even the Doctor had to admit that that was overly optimistic. “In any case, knowing puts us in a better position than not knowing. Might give us some bargaining power.”

“Bargaining power,” Nadia agreed, “I like the sound of that. How do we get it?”

“Well…” The Doctor sat down on the stairs opposite Omar, so that all four of them were in a loose sort of circle. “First of all, let’s figure out: _why us_? Nadia, do you want to go first?”

Nadia looked a bit perplexed.

“Tell us about yourself,” the Doctor encouraged. “Who you are, what you do, anything that might be a little odd or make you stand out or even just tie in to someone else’s lives.”

Nadia nodded. “I, well, my name’s Nadia, and I live with my dad and sister. Was working on my doctorate, but then I got this job working for UNIT—”

“You work for UNIT?” The Doctor’s eyebrows rose.

“I…yes? In their chemical division? We had that bio-weapon that the Slitheen dropped on Manchester last year, and I was on the team that manufactured the antidote. You think that’s relevant?”

“Oh yeah,” the Doctor said, “no way _that’s_ a coincidence. What about you?” She turned to Omar since he was at least well enough dressed – tailored black trousers and a dark purple button-up – that he might’ve held some semi-official job.

“I’m an engineer.” He shrugged. “Aerospace, mostly. Nothing to do with anything UNIT-related, just private stuff.”

“All right, okay,” the Doctor said, “aerospace is a tangential connection, of sorts. Something to do with aerospace and UNIT. That could be anything, maybe a place to start. Now, you,” she turned to Emily, “how do _you_ fit in?”

Emily shrugged. “I’m…nobody. I tried this online thing for a bit, but I just lost money. So then I was working in a shop, but the owners up and moved to Calais. I’m currently a part-time yoga instructor, but I don’t know how much longer I can make that last. I’ve got three flatmates and am behind on the rent. Nothing involving governments or-or _spaceships_ or anything that anyone would care about.”

The Doctor frowned. “No suspicious or important clients – say, potential aliens? How about friends and family?”

“My mum’s a clerk, and my dad’s long gone. I don’t know what a suspicious client would even look like. I’ve got a dog-groomer, I guess? She talks about perfuming bulldogs sometimes; sounds pretty alien to me.”

“That, I regret to inform you, is a uniquely and bizarrely human fetish.” The Doctor pressed her forefingers to her temples and tried to force her brain to make the necessary connections. “All right, back to you,” she turned to Nadia. “You’re the best clue. What’s UNIT up to these days?”

“Uh…” Nadia looked suddenly uncomfortable. “That’s…high confidential, actually. Oh god, is this one of those spear-phishing attacks like they warned us about in security training? Like, you’ve conned me into this elaborate scenario to get covert intel? Are you all foreign agents?”

The Doctor winced. “No, I’m UNIT, too. Here, I think I even have a card somewhere.” She proceeded to fish out of her pockets: three socket wrenches, a pair of callipers, some package twine, a hot-pink scrunchie, three broken quantum circuit boards, and a yoyo. Still no sonic – that was really starting to bug her. She found her psychic paper, which would’ve been useful if she was planning on fibbing, but she wasn’t because she’d already had a rough enough time getting what little trust she had. Finally, amidst some possibly-sentient pocket lint, she found an old, black leather wallet. “Here,” she presented Nadia with her UNIT ID card.

Nadia looked at the ID, looked at the Doctor, and then looked back at the ID. “This is a picture of some old bloke,” she pointed out.

The Doctor winced at that. “Oh, _right_. Sorry about that.” She went with the psychic paper after all. One day, she’d really have to remember to get that updated.

Nadia looked perplexed at the first ID but accepted the second, thankfully. “A few years back, someone unleashed the Praxeus cure into Earth’s atmosphere,” she said, handing the Doctor back both IDs. “We’ve been studying it ever since, for broader applications.”

The Doctor groaned. “Useless, useless, useless,” she complained. “There’s _got_ to be something here! All right: married? No?”

“No,” Nadia agreed.

“No,” Emily shook her head.

“Just celebrated our anniversary,” Omar said.

“Congratulations,” the Doctor said, off-hand. “Oh, you’ve all got housemates. Any chance there’s some connection between _them_ , and you’re all hostages? Blackmail of some sort?”

“My dad’s retired. Sister’s at uni. Psychology.”

“I’ve got a uni student too: theatre arts. Also a temp and…well, is ‘failed vlogger’ a job?”

“The better half’s also an engineer.”

“I don’t get it.” The Doctor sighed. “I don’t suppose any of you know what Mark did?”

“Other than get drunk on business trips to Singapore and have a really short temper?” Nadia offered sheepishly.

“ _Twenty minutes remaining_ ,” that damned mechanical voice cut in.

The Doctor swore. “More time! I need more time!”

Emily’s breath hitched again. She’d been calmer when she was talking (which was accomplishment enough in and of itself), but that reminder hadn’t done her any good. “W-We need to get out of here,” she pleaded. “We’ve played your little game. I’ve told you _everything_! Why is someone doing this to me?”

“I don’t know,” the Doctor tried to reassure her, “and I’m sorry this is happening to you. But I promise you that I _will_ figure this out.”

“Will you really?” Omar said, somewhat cuttingly. “Because you keep saying that, but I haven’t seen any signs of progress so far.”

Emily looked absolutely terrified at that realisation.

Nadia gave Omar an annoyed look and started rubbing circles into Emily’s back again, which – ironically – seemed to make Emily start crying again.

“Right,” the Doctor said and rose to her feet, “Plan B.”

The Doctor succeeded in half disassembling the relativity differentiator before anyone finally came over to ask her what Plan B actually was.

“Will that…help us get out of here?” Emily asked hopefully, pointing to the tachyon transfusers.

“Nope!” the Doctor answered cheerily, and began reassembling the main drive methodically.

“Then, is it some kind of weapon?” Nadia suggestion. “Or a way to blast through that rock?”

“Nuh-uh,” the Doctor shook her head. “Not that either.”

“What are you even _doing_?” Omar demanded, looking more than a little put out. About time the Doctor got a genuine reaction out of him. Even better would be…

The Doctor’s finger slipped, so that the stasis field for the micro-blackhole fell…

And, in a flash, Omar’s hand shot out and caught it, inches before it could impact with the ground and blow them all to bits.

The Doctor gave him a slow, victorious smile.

Omar’s eyes widened for one moment, before he countered with a malignant grin.

“Now,” the Doctor said smugly, “how about you let these two go, and the two of us can cut to the crux of the matter?”

Omar shrugged, pulled the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver from his pocket, and pointed it at the energy beacons overhead. The Doctor had a moment of panic before the beams shot down, and Nadia and Emily were no more.

“You _killed_ them!” she exclaimed, outraged, snatching her sonic from his offering hand. “Why would you…?”

“Please, Doctor, you wound me!” He held mock-pained hands over where the two Time-Lord hearts were. “It was only a transmat. They’ve all been teleported safely home. Just for you, mind you.”

She used the sonic to confirm that, then scanned him quickly and snorted. “Time Lord, of course. You weren’t very good at hiding it, you know.”

His eyes brightened at the accusation. “Did you like that?” He giggled with glee, practically bouncing on his toes. “I _knew_ you’d caught on to the fact that I’d engaged my respiratory bypass to play possum while you tried to calm the primitives.”

“And you kept blinking when I switched into accelerated time; the actual humans all froze, of course.”

“Yes, yes!” he agreed delightedly. “Lovely trick, threatening to drop this.” He set the stasis field very delicately back into the safety of its tachyon casing. “I’ll fully admit, you got me there. Well done.”

“Also the TARDIS door.”

“Sorry, what?” he blinked at her in confusion.

“You closed it before dematerialisation. No way a human would’ve known you needed to do that.” She couldn’t help but feel a little smug that she’d apparently caught him off guard there.

He frowned for a moment, and then shrugged it off with a laugh. “Force of habit,” he conceded. “I didn’t even notice.”

“Right then,” the Doctor said. “So…what? The High Council sent you to…test me? Who are you, anyway? What was the point of all this?”

“Now, now, Doctor,” he teased, waggling one finger in front of her nose before strutting over to a very comfy-looking sofa (when had that got there?) and sprawling leisurely across it, “that would be telling.”

The Doctor narrowed suspicious eyes on him when, suddenly, the mechanical voice sounded again: “ _Ten minutes remaining_.”

The Doctor looked at him sharply. “But…we’re done. Humans gone back home. Figured out it was you. What’s the countdown for?”

“Done?” the other Time Lord raised a sceptical eyebrow. “My dearest Doctor, you’ve just finally pressed start.”

***

The Doctor had to give the other Time Lord one thing: now that his cover was blown, he’d stopped playing coy and answered her questions almost as rapidly as she could ask them. It was refreshing, for once, not to be held up by the slowness of other minds around her. On the other hand, it was infuriating to be held up by the slowness of her _own_ mind, for once.

“Who are you?”

“Can’t tell you that. It’d be cheating.”

“Is this a game to you, then?”

“Oh, most definitely.”

Nothing surprising there. The Time Lords had played with the fate of the entire universe often enough. They usually weren’t bold enough to admit it, though.

“Did the High Council send you?”

A laugh. “Most definitely _not_.”

“But _someone_ sent you?”

He waved his hand back and forth. “Yes and no.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Phrase the question better.”

“Are you working for someone?”

“Never.”

“But you’re working _with_ someone?”

“With and against,” he agreed. “Always.”

“Is that someone else a Time Lord, too?”

“More than any other, perhaps,” he practically purred with satisfaction.

The Doctor took a moment, taken aback at that. Time Lords usually didn’t show as much emotion as this one did. He was…unusual. Time Lords didn’t play games like this, either. She could imagine them testing her, of course, but once the game was up, they would sit her down in front of some tribunal and lecture her endlessly on all her deep, disappointing failings as one of their own, and then think up some sadistic punishment that no one with any sense of justice would ever conceive of. They wouldn’t be…well, having _fun_. Ever.

“Are you,” she asked cautiously, “working _against_ the High Council instead?”

“Oh, that is an excellent way of putting it. I quite like it. Tell me more.”

“You’re a renegade?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then why do you care about me?” the Doctor asked, genuinely baffled. “It’s not like _I’m_ about to work for the High Council, either.”

“Can’t answer that one,” the other Time Lord said. “Try another.”

“Why are you on Earth?”

“You tell me.”

“What?” The Doctor frowned. “There’s no reason whatsoever for a Time Lord to be on Earth. The only thing of significance on Earth is…”

He beckoned with one hand, encouraging her conclusion to come faster.

“…Me. You’re here for me.”

“ _Always_.”

The Doctor wracked her brain. _Always_? That really sounded like she’d encountered him before, but she was drawing a complete blank. Just like…

“Oh… _Oh_!” the Doctor realised. “Have we met before?”

“Repeatedly.”

“But I don’t remember you?”

“Don’t you?”

“And I also don’t remember how I got here. My memories of you have been erased, is that it?”

“High five!” he grinned.

“Oi, that’s _my_ thing!” the Doctor complained, then paused. Was that a clue? He’d really been dropping an awful lot of clues, hadn’t he? Almost like he _wanted_ her to succeed. He’d been sneaking in little hints all along, trying to draw her to…what? Something tugged at the edge of her consciousness, just out of reach.

“Go on, go on,” he encouraged her, sounding almost…hopeful?

“You,” she continued, “know me very well, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he sounded almost relieved.

“And I… I know you?”

“Outside of your current little handicap.”

“My little handicap… If the Time Lords aren’t involved, then the only one left is you. _You_ messed with my memories?”

“Guilty.”

“But why? Would purpose would that serve?”

“That’s another no-no. Time’s ticking, Doctor.”

“Oh, but you _want_ me to remember, don’t you?” That was the only thing that made sense: he was obviously clever, but he’d made so many mistakes that they had to be deliberate; he loved a game, but what was the fun of playing by oneself?

“More than anything,” he agreed fervently.

Something about the _way_ he said that, deep and dark and intimate, sent shivers up her spine. She’d felt that before, she recalled, when their eyes had first met.

“We’re connected,” she stated, not a question.

“Yes,” he agreed, like the word was a prayer on his lips.

“Oh, oh, _oh_! And that makes sense! The TARDIS… She’s not cooperating with _you_. She’d never do that. But _me_? If I told her to… Before I lost my memories…” She paused. “Wait, you said you had a co-conspirator. It’s me, isn’t it?”

“Really, Doctor,” his smile was soft and fond, and also really quite disturbingly deranged, “you are very, very good. _Yes_ ,” he breathed again.

At the back of her mind, an absolutely insane notion began to take form. Because this, him, it changed _everything_. Millennia of being alone in the universe, reaching out for tentative connections with the people she met, but always, at the end, that deep solitude of knowing that she was the only one, the only one _like her_. But, oh, if there’d been _another_ , someone worth noticing. Someone brilliant and inventive, passionate and diabolical, mercurial and playful, curious and persistent, and always, always _there_ , even when she didn’t want him to be… There was only one way she could ever respond to someone like that.

“How much,” she asked bluntly, stepping right up to him, meeting him squarely in the eye with no fear – with sudden, unexpected _delight_ , in fact, “have you been lying, all this time?”

He lowered his eyes, almost coquettishly. Pretty eyelashes, really. Pretty regeneration in general. A bit mad, perhaps, but the Doctor really couldn’t throw stones there.

“Answer my question,” the Doctor demanded softly.

“Oh, my dear Doctor, I haven’t lied to you at all.”

The Doctor felt her hearts speed up in response. Certain statements resonated through her bones, echoing like hopes and dreams she’d abandoned long ago on Gallifrey. “And,” she said, dropping one knee onto the seat just outside his hip, “this engineer ‘better half’ of yours… Tell me, just how _did_ we spend our anniversary?”

He shivered and looked up at her helplessly, which was enough of an answer. Her other knee slid between his legs, so that she towered over him, straddling that one thigh. He felt good between her legs, _right_ in the way that she’d never experienced with another living being before. Or, at least, _thought_ she’d never experienced before.

“ _Ten seconds remaining_.”

“You’re _mine_.” The Doctor knew him now, even without her memories.

“ _Nine_.”

He was chaos to her order.

“ _Eight_.”

Hatred to her love.

“ _Seven_.”

War to her peace.

“ _Six_.”

Dark to her light.

“ _Five_.”

And there, just at the edge of her awareness, it hovered. A word as integral to her being as ‘Doctor’.

“ _Four_.”

“C’mon…” he breathed earnestly, eyes wide and almost frightened as their final seconds counted down. “You _know_ the safe word.”

“ _Three_.”

She gave him a reassuring smile. He needn’t worry. Not about this, never about this…

“ _Two_.”

Never lied to her, huh? How had he introduced himself again? _Omar Esteth_.

“ _One_.”

“O,” she unscrambled simply enough, “the _Master_.”

He let out a breath of vindication against her lips that was half a sob. She hadn’t even realised that their gravity had pulled them that close in the interval, but once she did, she had no choice but to kiss him, long and soft and deep.

It all came rushing back to her, as she did so.

_So alone back on Gallifrey, everyone else so locked into their internal power struggles, dull and stale and staid in their own ways for millions upon millions of years. No place for imagination or curiosity. No spark. She was an alien among the only people to whom she would ever belong until, oh, there was **another** , another light as bright and sharp and unpredictable as her own. Brilliant light, brilliant mind, brilliant soul… She loved him on first sight._

_And then, eons later, her hearts broken. The two of them too unpredictable, spiralling apart like the expanding universe itself. Her, content with seeing; him, bent on conquering. But still just **right**. Cleaving close to her, setting his little traps, lures, enticing her to **play**. And, oh, this might have been a game of deadly stakes, and she might’ve felt so guilty for it, but playing with him was just so much **fun**. A challenge, a rush, that extra pulse of adrenaline every time she realised it was him, that he still hadn’t left her despite all their differences, that he would be there – constantly her shadow – for all eternity…_

_Time rushing forward yet again. Lifestimes spent as friends and enemies and lovers and none-of-the-aboves now. The destruction of Gallifrey. Twice: once by her and once by him. Perfect symmetry, as if they ever could have been anything else. Her own overwhelming guilt until he’d given her a good solid kick in the pants to remind her that there were a hell of a lot worse things that having Gallifrey destroyed (like, say, having Gallifrey extant). And now his turn: crippled by insecurity, shaken to his very core, wobbling off-axis and tumbling toward his own destruction…_

_“It’s all a lie,” he’d said to her with tears in his eyes, when they’re first come together in the Matrix. “Everything is a lie.”_

_She was the one who had taught him to cry in the first place. “Not this,” she’d insisted. “Not **us**. No matter what they did to me or where they took me from, they don’t get to take this, never this.” She’d kissed him then, too, like he meant more to her than the known universe. That wasn’t a lie, either._

_“I won’t,” he’d insisted, choked up, furious, irrational. “You aren’t mine. You were **never** going to be mine, no matter who I was or what I did. I could never be…” A broken sob. “No, I won’t do it, sit here and meditate on how inferior I am, how I could never, ever had been good enough. Don’t you see? For me, there’s nothing but to sit in this watered-down afterlife, trapped in this dull pabulum created by the bastards that did this to you, lied to me all my lives. And I am **no one’s** puppet!”_

_“But couldn’t we just…” the Doctor had said softly, held him close, clung to him desperately, “ **be** , just for once? Now that nothing else matters?”_

_“ **Everything** else matters!” he’d insisted. “I would rather **die** than be your lesser! I’d rather all of us died!”_

She remembered it now: _the cold, hard fear when she’d realised what he was prepared to do. The destruction he was prepared to wreak, erasing the entire Matrix mainframe from within. If anyone could do it, it was him; he’d always been so beautiful at destruction._

_“Please, no,” she’d pleaded, one of very few times throughout eternity that she’d ever done so, “you’ll destroy me, forever.” She’d said that, because it seemed like an argument that would persuade. The only thing that mattered to her was: He couldn’t destroy **himself**. She couldn’t bear that, a universe without him. It didn’t matter if he burned a million billion suns and ruined a million billion worlds. As much as it had always shamed her to admit it, those things had never mattered to her, not compared to the bond the two of them shared. He’d always had infinite get-out-of-jail-free cards from her, for as long as the two of them had been playing._

_He’d softened at that. She’d played him right, used the one thing in all the universe that he actually loved against him. But then he’d shaken his head, firmed his grip on the memory-wipe he’d set to inject into the mainframe, and said, “None of it matters. The two of us…was never real. I wish… I wish we could have…”_

_“We **can**.” She’d scented blood now. She’d known how to defeat him. She always had. “No matter what lies they’ve told us, how they’ve used us and manipulated us, we’ve **always been real**. Do you remember how much they feared us? Oh, our instructors threw up enough of a fuss when we caused trouble, skipped class, played pranks. But do you remember how we **really** unhinged them?”_

_He’d nodded slowly, coming to her way of thinking. “It terrified them,” he’d agreed. “How inseparable we were. How nothing they could do would divide us. How we lo—” He’d shied away from the last word like a skittish animal. “How we felt. They could never understand anyone feeling so deeply for each other.”_

_She’d smiled at him tenderly then, run her fingers through his hair. “That’s real. That’s what matters. Let’s terrify them again, even in death.” Her hand had eased over his on his erase button, guiding him away. “Inseparable, in that way that they could never understand. Could never control.”_

_His breath had hitched. “You don’t love me,” he’d accused. Finally let that word sneak out. “Not ever, and certainly not anymore. Not after everything I’ve… It’s hate now. It’s been hate for a long time.”_

_The Doctor had shaken her head. “No,” she’d agreed. “I don’t love you. But I don’t hate you. You’re not my friend and you’re not my lover and you’re not my enemy. You’re all of those things and none, at the same time. The word for what we are,” she’d said seductively, pulling him close, “has never been invented, because no two beings in all the universe have ever been what we are to each other. We’re Doctor-and-Master. And I do Doctor-and-Master you. Don’t let that end.”_

_He’d shut his eyes then, steeling himself, obviously ravenous for the words escaping her lips. “You’re lying,” he’d insisted stubbornly. “This is a trick. You know that now: we’ve never been the same, no matter how many times I tried in vain to make it so. You’re only trying to foil me, just like you always do…” His pleas had sounded weak, though, like he’d been begging for her to convince him otherwise._

_“Take away everything,” she’d promised. “Wipe me clean, the way they did. And I absolutely guarantee that I’ll fall for you again, the same way I did the first time, at first sight, an hour at most.”_

_He’d laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of that claim. “An hour to fall in eternal love-hate? With a complete insignificant?”_

_“Try it,” she’d offered. “As many times as you want. I promise you, ten times out of ten.”_

_“How can you be so certain?”_

_“Because,” she’d said, “you’re you, and I’m me, and in a universe with someone as fascinating as **you** in it, how could I ever **not**?”_

The Doctor pulled away from their kiss then, as the last little bits of logistics sorted themselves back in her memories, now released from where the two of them had locked them away for the duration of this little game. “Told you so,” she informed him with a triumphant grin. “That last round just now was ten times, out of ten, if I’ve counted correctly.”

He looked absolutely _wrecked_ at the realisation, truly defeated for maybe the first time since she’d known him. “I…”

She clasped him to her, let him bury his face in her neck rather than face the full force of the blinding, crushing, _maddening_ bond that had formed between them. Maybe not bred into them from the start, the way he’d always believed, but built slowly over the millennia of his endless pursuit, through the force of his (frankly ridiculous) determination. “ _My_ Master,” she said softly into his hair.

He laughed or sobbed or both, into her shoulder. “I’ve always loved the way you say my name,” he confessed. “You’re the only person who’s ever said it, not like I own you, but like _you_ own _me_.”

That was because she did, but at this point, it didn’t really need to be said. “Let’s go home,” she said.

He nodded and, with one last playful shake, surrendered the Matrix detonator over to her, for good.

She took probably too much delight in neutralising it.

***

The TARDIS dropped them in the Doctor’s bed, back in her room of her Matrix mindscape, and then retreated to the corner of the room where – the Doctor was starting to suspect – she liked to watch the two of them.

The Master curled into the Doctor’s arms, one hand still clasping the pocket universe he wore around his neck, visible again now that the TARDIS had taken them back outside it. He looked frailer now, separated from the universe where he was god, once more back within the Time Lords’ mainframe. Fragile, almost.

The Doctor took her time and care with him, coaxing him out of himself with gentle caresses and kisses. Tending to him, the way he had for her just a few regenerations back, albeit in his own highly unusual (and thoroughly psychopathic) manner. A bit of tit-for-tat: you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. To be expected from such a long relationship, when a mere condolence card saying “So sorry you had to genocide our homeworld! :(” just wasn’t enough.

He responded, slowly but surely, unable to deny himself the pleasure of her, even at his lowest. At her first nip on his lower lip, his eyes flashed. When she pinched his nipple just a _bit_ too hard, he actually snarled and tossed her over, trying to pin her back onto the mattress beneath him.

They vied for supremacy, the way they always did: the Master through brute force, the Doctor through tricks and deceptions. She caught him off-guard and off-balance, rolled him onto his back, rose over him, hips on either sides of his thighs, grin triumphant as she brushed her hair back out of her eyes to look down on her prize.

He…acquiesced. There was no other way to describe it. It was never really a surrender, not with _him_ , but he _let_ her, wanted her, the same way that she let and wanted him. Another facet of their partnership, of infinite density and complexity, impossible to fathom, even for the two of them.

She nudged at his knees. “Let me at you,” she demanded and/or threatened and/or promised.

Again, he acquiesced, eyes dark and knowing and unyielding as she slipped between his spread legs.

There were logistics with every regeneration, figuring out how their latest bodies slotted together, but this one was trickier than most. She fumbled for the nightstand, found a strap-on that she was reasonably certain he’d used on her last regeneration around, and managed to figure out how to get the damned thing on, with his occasional assistance.

He shut his eyes and took a deep breath, almost meditatively, as she teased his opening with her fingers, testing his readiness. He opened for her beautifully, eagerly. She watched with rapt fascination how he took her fingers repeatedly, a wild, dangerous creature that was somehow completely hers.

“Don’t,” his hand clamped around hers when her fingers trailed languidly down to his balls, exploring him, “try my patience, Doctor.” His eyes were open now, dark and deadly and impossibly alluring. His nostrils flared once aggressively.

She snorted right back at him. Throughout all their incarnations, the Master had always been the same: easily bored, starved for the Doctor’s constant attention, and quick to jump to homicide whenever either of the first two points irked him the wrong way. There were times to test him and times not. This once, she ceded to his request.

He wriggled his hips experimentally when she placed the strap-on up against him. The contraption hadn’t been doing much for her up until now, but with the pressure of him against the tip, the nub where it fastened to her ground sharply against her clit. She let out a startled gasp, looked straight down into his eyes through the curtain of her hair, and chased that spark of pleasure, pressing into him slowly and relentlessly.

“Ah, ah, ah!” Little gasps escaped her lips as each push deeper into him struck her clit _just_ right.

He breathed heavily beneath her, chest heaving every so often between obvious attempts to calm himself. He was practically _vibrating_ with pent-up energy that begged to be spent.

“Hold on tight,” she grinned down at him, just a bit mischievously, and thrust _hard_.

He groaned in response and then, on the second thrust, met her, awkwardly at first, but more smoothly on the third thrust. By the fifth, they were simpatico once more. By the seventh, the Doctor lost count and just let the sensations run her wild.

She took him, fast and relentless, feeling her own pleasure building. He was hard between their bodies, and she needed more of him, every extra reminder that she could get that he was here and he was _hers_ and always had been/always would be. She palmed him loosely with her right hand, stroking him experimentally, while she propped herself up with her left on his shoulder.

“I’m not _fragile_!” he snarled and ground up hard onto her, into her, sending shocks of pleasure back up through her clit. “You can’t hurt me, can’t kill me, can _never_ be rid of me!”

He’d proved that over the millennia only too well.

Her hand squeezed around him, just on this side of too tight, and she watched his entire body draw up and tense at the pleasure/pain.

“You,” she informed him, leaning down to taste a quick kiss against the heat of mouth, “have _serious_ issues.”

“No more than you,” he laughed delightedly, that mad cackle with which he’d burned civilisations and slaughtered innocents and, apparently, also made passionate love with her.

The Doctor gasped out a wet, frantic breath against his cheek, and felt her hair stick to the skin of his neck with the sweat between them. “Naughty, naughty,” she teased and rose up over him once more, rolling her hips now, working earnestly toward his climax. “Didn’t you pay attention in class? Time Lords,” a gasp, “do _not_ ,” a sharp thrust, “dirty themselves like this.”

“You’ve always been such a terrible influence on me,” he purred, “ _Doctor_.”

And she really, really had been trying to get him off, she was willing to swear. But at that she came suddenly, embarrassingly fast, slumping over him with a surprised “oh!”

“That letter,” he concluded, “is the best _nom de plume_ I’ve chosen yet.”

He flipped them, then, rode the dildo she wore with harsh little grunts, wrapped his hand around himself, until he spilled with a sigh of relief onto her stomach.

They heaved together in the aftermath, eyes locked in eternal contention, and then with surprising gentleness, he raised her hand to his lips and, one by one, kissed each knuckle softly. He canted his hips up and off her strap-on as he did so, rolling over onto his side, and guiding her until she was spooned up behind him.

Fumbling with her left hand only, she eventually managed to unfasten all the seemingly unnecessary belts and buckles that held her in (Missy always had had a bizarre penchant for overly complex Victorian-style devices) and chucked the strap-on carelessly to one side. He still held her hand, clasped tight in his, against his chest. She twirled her fingers in his chest hairs teasingly, took a few calming breaths against his nape, and – yes – had a bit of a panic at the depths of the intimacy they’d just shared, were still sharing.

The urge to run to the far ends of space and time was there and probably always would be. Not that, with him, it had ever done her any good whatsoever.

“Right,” she finally said lightly, as always ignoring the persistent herd of elephants, cassowaries, mongooses (mongeese?), and narwhals between them, “don’t know how you managed with that contraption for so long. I suppose it works well enough, but getting it off and on?”

“The most obvious alternative,” he said with a lazy yawn, “would be to do it the other way around these regenerations.”

The Doctor paused at that thought. “Huh. Hadn’t considered that. Okay, that’s a suggestion for next time.”

His shoulders shook with laughter, but it was a relaxed sort of laughter, not the brittle mania he’d become prone to in more recent years. The Doctor almost went soppy for him in response.

“If I didn’t know better,” she went on softly, carding the fingers of the hand he wasn’t holding hostage through his hair, “I’d almost say you wanted me to win.”

“Mmm,” he hummed noncommittally and pressed a kiss against the pad of her thumb.

“You even,” she prodded just a bit, because she’d never been the let-sleeping-lions-lie sort, “gave me a jumble. I love a good jumble.”

She could feel his smile against her fingertips. “Me, too,” he agreed.

“Although it would have served you right if I’d called you ‘Theo Master’ instead, just to be contrary.”

He laughed, rich and deep, shaking her body as well where she’d spooned up behind him. “Oh, Doctor,” he teased, “do you actually know how to be any other way?”

“You really are terrible, you know,” she informed him. “And now that I remember that you exist? _You’ll_ be the one getting Lorenzo down from the TARDIS rafters.”

“Loren—You’ve _named_ that bird?”

“I like the bird,” the Doctor decided. “Lorenzo has good taste. Nearly shat on you, for one. Better than some of those humans you found… They’re not _all_ that bad in a crisis, you know. Where’d you even get them?”

He snorted. “Chosen at random. Absolutely normal, typical humans. Just because _you_ have rose-coloured specs about the species…”

The Doctor grumbled. “Nabbing one from UNIT was a smart move. You threw me off the scent there…for a time. Come to think of it, Lab-Coat was pretty good, actually. I don’t suppose…?”

“No!” he snapped in a huff. “You are _not_ keeping any virtual pets.”

“Aw, c’mon, just a _little_ one?” She couldn’t help but wheedle him just a bit.

He growled, turned abruptly in her arms, and promptly rolled over her so that he was sprawled on top of her body, trapping her beneath him.

“Oof!” He was heavier than he looked. “Okay, point made.” He didn’t move. Of course he didn’t. She tried jabbing him in the ribs with one index finger and eventually he relented enough so that he cuddled up beside her instead. He still had one arm and leg draped over her like a steel trap, though. Oddly enough, her instinct to flee had faded somewhat. The fact that they weren’t talking about anything substantial helped.

“Fine,” he finally relented, “you can keep a _little_ one. I’ll give you Lorenzo.”

From him, that was an awfully sweet offer. The Doctor found herself touched to the core by it.

Cautiously, tentatively, she reached out with her mind to touch his. There was a deadly, electrified barbed-wire fence for a second, and then a conscious relaxation with his next exhale. At least she wasn’t the only one with intimacy issues.

Inside, his mind was scorched bare at the inferno that had raged through it for millennia. The scaffolding that held him together was so precarious now, and yet he _held_ remarkably well. Few minds had the calibre of control to maintain their structural integrity after all the torments (many of them, admittedly, self-inflicted) that he’d endured over the years. There was something breathtaking about it, like discovering that a house had somehow survived a supernova.

Her own mind slotted into the barren spaces so easily. She was just as rickety these days, she knew only too well, just as close to collapse. They fitted together nicely, really. Held.

The Doctor couldn’t even remember the last time she’d been held properly.

He broke the silence with a dark chuckle: “Play with me again tomorrow?”

The Doctor rolled her eyes. “Oh, come now, when have I ever said no to _that_?”

He pressed a surprisingly tender kiss to the line of her jaw, as if she were a very dangerous volatile compound that needed to be handled gingerly before it stabilised. “I’ll even leave out the countdown next time.”

The Doctor glared down at him. “Don’t you _dare_!” Then she grinned dangerously, wolfishly, and admitted: “The countdown is the best part!”

The Master grinned back her. “My dear Doctor, I couldn’t agree with you more.”


End file.
